Related papers: HoLoArm: Deformable Arms for Collision-Tolerant Qu…
Natural flyers use soft wings to seamlessly enable a wide range of flight behaviours, including agile manoeuvres, squeezing through narrow passageways, and withstanding collisions. In contrast, conventional quadrotor designs rely on rigid…
Collision detection and recovery for aerial robots remain a challenge because of the limited space for sensors and local stability of the flight controller. We introduce a novel collision-resilient quadrotor that features a compliant arm…
Rigid grippers used in existing aerial manipulators require precise positioning to achieve successful grasps and transmit large contact forces that may destabilize the drone. This limits the speed during grasping and prevents "dynamic…
Despite advances in localization and navigation, aerial robots inevitably remain susceptible to accidents and collisions. In this work, we propose a passive foldable airframe as a protective mechanism for a small aerial robot. A foldable…
There is a growing need for vertical take-off and landing vehicles, including drones, which are safe to use and can adapt to collisions. The risks of damage by collision, to humans, obstacles in the environment, and drones themselves, are…
Autonomous missions of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are prone to collisions owing to environmental disturbances and localization errors. Consequently, a UAV that can endure collisions and perform recovery control in critical aerial…
In this work, we propose a novel quadrotor design capable of folding its arms vertically to grasp objects and navigate through narrow spaces. The transformation is controlled actively by a central servomotor, gears, and racks. The arms…
This paper presents QuadSoft, a novel fully actuated quadrotor equipped with continuous-curvature, tendon-driven soft robotic arms. The design combines a semi-rigid central frame with flexible arms, enabling controlled structural…
Drones have become essential in various applications, but conventional quadrotors face limitations in confined spaces and complex tasks. Deformable drones, which can adapt their shape in real-time, offer a promising solution to overcome…
Due to dynamic variations such as changing payload, aerodynamic disturbances, and varying platforms, a robust solution for quadrotor trajectory tracking remains challenging. To address these challenges, we present a deep reinforcement…
The paper proposes a novel concept of docking drones to make this process as safe and fast as possible. The idea behind the project is that a robot with a soft gripper grasps the drone in midair. The human operator navigates the robotic arm…
In this work, an experimental characterization of the configuration space of a soft, pneumatically actuated morphing quadrotor is presented, with a focus on precise thrust characterization of its flexible arms, considering the effect of…
Flying robots are usually rather delicate and require protective enclosures when facing the risk of collision, while high complexity and reduced payload are recurrent problems with collision-resilient flying robots. Inspired by arthropods'…
Quadrotors have demonstrated remarkable versatility, yet their full aerobatic potential remains largely untapped due to inherent underactuation and the complexity of aggressive maneuvers. Traditional approaches, separating trajectory…
The ability to enter in contact with and manipulate physical objects with a flying robot enables many novel applications, such as contact inspection, painting, drilling, and sample collection. Generally, these aerial robots need more…
Aerial manipulators, which combine robotic arms with multi-rotor drones, face strict constraints on arm weight and mechanical complexity. In this work, we study a lightweight 2-degree-of-freedom (DoF) arm mounted on a quadrotor via a…
Quadrotors can provide services such as infrastructure inspection and search-and-rescue, which require operating autonomously in cluttered environments. Autonomy is typically achieved with receding-horizon planning, where a short plan is…
This work proposes a strategy for organising quadrotors around a payload to enable hovering without external stimuli, together with a MATLAB software for modelling the dynamics of a quadrotor-payload system. Based on geometric concepts, the…
Morphing multirotors, such as the Foldable Drone , can increase the versatility of drones employing in-flight-adaptive-morphology. To further increase precision in their tasks, recent works have investigated stable flight in asymmetric…
Collision avoidance algorithms are of central interest to many drone applications. In particular, decentralized approaches may be the key to enabling robust drone swarm solutions in cases where centralized communication becomes…